The use of relevant information in the chapter is demonstrated by the use of story telling of Romania. Levitt mentions it as an important one since he puts it this way, “Romanian abortion story is a reverse image of the American crime story”. It was his anti-abortion laws that had ironically caused
Nicolae’s untimely death but here in the United States as Levitt goes to prove, it was the legalized abortion law that had made the biggest impact on the crime-rate drop of the 1990s.
In this chapter, Levitt argues that the most plausible solution to the problem was the legalized abortion after Roe vs. Wade. But as mentioned above he also takes into account that there might have been some other crime-drop explanations besides legalized abortion. Therefore, Levitt statistically analyzes the eight most plausible expert solutions to figure out the drop in crime rate in the U.S. in the 1990s. These solutions included explanations such as a strong economy, increased reliance on prisons, a severe punishment system, innovative policing strategies, tougher gun control laws, increased number of police, and the bursting of the crack bubble.
He makes his arguments against each of these explanations and uses statistics and reasoning for the purpose. He tests his solution (legalize abortion) the same way against the problem by using statistical analysis. When testing these explanations, he keeps himself in balance; he gives as much credit to any other explanation as he does to his own. By providing numerical results through statistical analysis and offering examples for each argument, Levitt makes a consistent effort to credit and support each argument to be correlated or causal or unrelated. For example, Levitt shows that the strong economy theory is flawed because studies showed that an unemployment decline of 1% point accounted for 1% drop in nonviolent crimes. During the 1990s, the unemployment rate fell by 2% points: nonviolent crimes, meanwhile, fell roughly by 40 percent.
While exploring the other eight plausible alternative solutions, Levitt also displays a significant order in how he explains these solutions. Levitt arranges the simple looking chart provided by the LexisNexis Database and organizes these explanations in terms of controversy. He starts out with the least controversial: the strong economy and ends up with the most controversial: the legalization of
abortion. The order of controversy as Levitt goes on to prove, has an effect on the outcome. The least controversial seems to have little merit as the overall cause of the problem while the most controversial has the most merit in the case. However, Levitt does not discredit all of the eight explanations just the same. He has a good control for bias in the process of testing against each argument. Levitt acknowledges that explanations such as innovative policing strategies and increase in the number of police had brought significant reduction in the crime rates in the 1990s. One such example is the wide-scale hiring of police in cities across the country. Not only did all those new policemen act as a deterrent, but they also provided the manpower to imprison criminals who might have otherwise gone uncaught. The hiring of additional police accounted for roughly 10 percent of the 1990s crime drop. Levitt also illustrates by statistical results that crack market accounted for roughly 15 percent of the crime drop of the 1990s which was a substantial factor in the crime drop. Another significant explanation was the imprisonment rates and capital punishment laws. Numerically interpreted, imprisonment accounted for 1/3rd of the drop in crime rate and capital punishment explained one twenty-fifth of the drop. As he makes his arguments against each of these crime-drop explanations, he uses statistics and reason to show how these explanations had in fact only contributed in the slightest way for the decline in crime rates of the 1990s. According to Levitt’s calculations, all the eight plausible crime-drop explanations only add close to 50% of the overall drop in crime rate. This still leaves the other 50% drop in crime rate still unexplained. Levitt statistically tests against his own solution of legalized abortion law and found statistically causal relationship. Since 1985, states with high abortion rates have experienced roughly 30% drop in crime relative to low-abortion states.
As Levitt analyzes each explanation, he uses different criteria for evaluation. He tests each crime-drop explanation including his own for correlation vs. causation. Levitt analyzes the number of police vs. crime rates in Denver and Washington D.C. Both cities have about the same population but Washington has nearly three times as many police as Denver and it also has eight times the number of murders. Does it mean that more cops are causing more murders? Levitt says no. It is just correlated but not causal. Whereas when Levitt examined the correlation between each state’s abortion rate and its crime rate, it showed that the states with the highest abortion rates in the 1970s experienced the greatest crime drops in the 1990s while states with low abortion rates experienced smaller crime drops. Another criterion for Levitt’s evaluation is statistical analysis: what crime-drop solution has made the highest percentage drop in the overall crime rate? According to his analysis, the imprisonment rate was a significant one, dropping crime rate by 33%. While examining his solution of legalizing abortion actually yielded a maximum percentage drop in the overall drop in crime rates. In one scenario he shows how states such as New York, California, Washington, Alaska, and Hawaii who has regulated legal abortion before Roe vs. Wade saw crime rates begin to drop earlier than the other 45 states. Between 1988 and 1994, violent crime in the early legalizing states fell 13% compared to the other states. The last criterion he uses is an economic perspective. Levitt states in the chapter, “Economics is above all a science of measurement”. He interprets each solution in terms of its incentives to determine the effect of any one factor or even the whole effect. For example, he shows that the bursting of crack bubble didn’t contribute much to the total drop because younger crack dealers decided that the smaller profits didn’t justify the risk. The incentive was much lower than the risk of having to kill someone or being killed. In the case of legal abortion, Levitt explains; it was a greater incentive for women as they were able to choose when they wanted to have children. As a result many abortions were performed in the first year alone after abortion was made legal. Furthermore, Levitt argues that had it not been for Roe vs. Wade, these children would have been alive today, growing up in unstable environment and most likely to be criminals. After significant statistical analysis, reasoning and evaluation of different criteria, Levitt reaches a conclusion that legalization of abortion post Roe vs. Wade and crime drop of the 1990s were casually related. Through the analysis of his claim, Levitt is able to successfully exclude the possibility of coincidence between legalization of abortion and crime-rate drop.
